[SLIDE 1] Hello everyone! My name is Melissa Jerome, and I work for - - PDF document

US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project Chronicling America – presentation prepared during COVID-19 pandemic April 2020 Melissa Jerome ChronAm COVID-19 presentation transcript Page 1 of 5

[SLIDE 1] Hello everyone! My name is Melissa Jerome, and I work for the George A. Smathers Libraries. Today I will be presenting on Chronicling America, a free digital library of historic newspapers. This is a great, user-friendly resource you can access from home, which I hope you’ll find useful especially while we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Before we begin, I’d like to give you some background information about the newspaper project I manage- the US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project- which provides free access to newspapers. [SLIDE 2] This project is part of a larger national program called the National Digital Newspaper Program (or NDNP for short). The National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with the Library of Congress developed this national project as a long-term effort to provide free access to historical newspapers published in the US and its territories. All newspapers digitized for the NDNP are uploaded to the digital newspaper resource, Chronicling America, which is what I will be showing you today. The US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project builds on the Florida & Puerto Rico Digital Newspaper Project, a collaborative project between the libraries at the University

• f Florida and the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras. The Florida & Puerto Rico Digital

Newspaper Project ran from 2013-2019 with the goal of digitizing historic newspapers from Florida and Puerto Rico which were included in Chronicling America. The US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project expands the efforts of the Florida & Puerto Rico Digital Newspaper Project to continue digitizing historic newspapers from the territory and state, with a focus on digitizing ethnic newspapers from Florida. This new project also expands the scope

• f the Florida & Puerto Rico project to include digitization of historic newspapers published in

the Virgin Islands with the help from a new partner, the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI). Through August 2021, the project team will work to provide access to an additional 100,000 pages of content from the state and territories, published between 1800-1963. [SLIDE 3] So let’s take a look at Chronicling America. As mentioned earlier, it serves as the hub of all newspapers digitized nationwide for the NDNP. It provides access to over 16 million pages of newspapers published from 1700s-1963, from over 45 states and currently 1 territory and it is FREE! This project is important for many reasons, one being preservation. A lot of these newspapers contain stories not found elsewhere. The content digitized for this project comes from microfilm, which in some cases does not last long. It’s also not the most accessible.

US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project Chronicling America – presentation prepared during COVID-19 pandemic April 2020 Melissa Jerome ChronAm COVID-19 presentation transcript Page 2 of 5

Which brings me to the second point- broader access. This content is all online, and did I mention it’s free? All you need is internet access to use Chronicling America and all the content in it. The content is also educational. Content covered in papers touch on historical events, from well-known international and national events like WWI and suffragist movement, to less-known local events happening in a specific community. These newspaper pages provide first-hand accounts of news as it happened, and serve as great primary sources for students, educators, and researchers. Link to access Chronicling America is included at the bottom of the slide. [SLIDE 4] Chronicling America, or ChronAm for short, is very user friendly and offers various ways to perform a search. The default is the general search, which is highlighted in red. This option allows you to search by general date range, select a state, and/or type in keyword(s). [SLIDE 5] I would suggest searching the content using the “advanced search” tab Here one can search newspapers by specific state, specific title, date, language, and even perform multiple keyword searching [SLIDE 6] Some other features of ChronAm include:

• zooming – by using scroll on mouse or the +/- buttons in the display viewer
• full screen view – by clicking the toggle button
• can view all pages for this specific issue – by clicking All Pages hyperlink
• can also download files –text and pdf using those buttons. PDF would provide an image
• f the page you are viewing, while Text would provide text file of the content on that

page which would come in handy if you’re working on a text-mining project. [SLIDE 7] The ChronAm display viewer also provides a permalink, which can be found via the clipping tool at the top right or more easily at the bottom of the display viewer. The permalink is especially important to save if you know you’ll want to revisit a page or if you plan to use the content for research or an assignment. The permalink should be included in your citation. You would cite the digital newspaper like you would a print newspaper, following the guidelines of the particular style you use (ie APA, MLA, Chicago). Our project libguide includes resources for the various citation styles. The link to that guide is at the bottom of the slide.

US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project Chronicling America – presentation prepared during COVID-19 pandemic April 2020 Melissa Jerome ChronAm COVID-19 presentation transcript Page 3 of 5

[SLIDE 8] There is also an About the Paper feature that gives you brief history/information about the newspaper itself. It provides alternative names for the paper, place & dates of publication, and an essay with brief description about the paper, its history, and type of news covered, and

• ften includes a brief history of city/town where it published.

From this page, you can also:

• Browse issues: by clicking on the on “calendar view” on the right
• Click to view “Libraries that have it” - view institutional holding records which is helpful if

you are interested in looking at issues of the paper that are not available in ChronAm [SLIDE 9] The text-searching and highlight features of ChronAm are available thanks to process of OCR, Optical Character Recognition. OCR is an automated process that converts printed text into computer readable text. Although it makes content more accessible, it’s important to remember that it is not perfect. There are problems with OCR, for example it will not convert certain types of fonts like the classic Coca-Cola font. And sometimes it does confuse certain letters, so it’s important to be patient with the searches. [SLIDE 10] On that note, I’d like to also share some important search tips. Because these are historical documents, it’s important to keep in mind that spelling and meaning of words have changed

• ver time. For example, you would want to search for “aeroplane” and not “airplane” which is

the more modern spelling. Historical context is important– an example we like to use is

• Thailand. Thailand was known as Siam until 1939, which would be important to know if you

were interested in finding content about that country pre-WW2. If you’re looking for news about a particular event, like the World War I, you might want to narrow the date range to “1914-1918” to ensure you’re finding content while the war was underway. If you’re interested in looking for information about a person, diversify your name searches. Try using name abbreviations and remember that women were typically referred to by their husband’s names. There also wasn’t spell-check, so you’ll encounter typos! Be patient and diversify your search terms.

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[SLIDE 11] ChronAm provides access to news about a broad range of topics. The papers from our project provide information on topics such as:

• Politics and Elections
• Agriculture
• Railways and Steamboats
• Natural Disasters
• Inventions
• Education
• Entertainment – film, theatre, sports
• Other National/International news – prohibition, suffrage, war

[SLIDE 12] There’s also a lot of news coverage of topics pertaining to Latin America and the Caribbean. Panama Canal is one of those that is heavily covered. Here is some sample content from the Florida papers. These examples are of the canal once it was built.

• some talking about the canal on it’s opening day
• how people all over were celebrating this achievement

[SLIDE 13] Mexican revolution is covered in our newspapers. One of these snippets talks about rebels taking control of city of Juarez. Another discusses plans made for the revolution by Ricardo Flores Magon who was the editor

• f an anarchist newspaper in Mexico and was affiliated with the Partido Liberal Mexicano.

[SLIDE 14] Feminism in Puerto Rico is another topic for which you can find content. Here is a sample of some content and a link to a blog post where you can learn more about the topic. [SLIDE 15] Various social media platforms are used to showcase some of the content from these newspapers. Facebook & Twitter are used often to post short content. Pinterest allows a way to organize and display the more visually appealing content (like illustrations and ads!) A WordPress Blog is used to delve deeper into a topic covered in the newspapers. Some topics blogged about include: history of aviation, women newspaper editors, and 1918 Spanish Flu.

US Caribbean & Ethnic Florida Digital Newspaper Project Chronicling America – presentation prepared during COVID-19 pandemic April 2020 Melissa Jerome ChronAm COVID-19 presentation transcript Page 5 of 5

Some of the blogs, specifically those incorporating content from the Puerto Rico papers, are available in both English and Spanish. For example, there is the feminism blog mentioned previously, but there is also a blog on history of hurricanes on the island, and one about Isabel Gonzalez whose supreme court case is considered the first regarding PR citizenship. I encourage you to check out and follow the project social media accounts and feel free to reach out if you have any questions! My contact information is on the slide. Thank you for tuning in and stay safe!